Kevin W. McCarthy

The Professor of On-Purpose

Business

Do You Have a Sense of Purpose?

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Look for it! You’ll hear it. Perhaps you’re even one who says it. “I did (such and such) and I had a real sense of purpose.” A “sense” is an inkling, a tiny bit, a nibble, a whiff, a morsel.

Why are you settling for so little? A sense of purpose is merely fumes on the combustible fuel found in truly knowing your purpose.

Invest 30 minutes to watch The POWER of Your 2-Word Purpose Statement. Learn what you’re missing and what you have to gain by knowing your 2-word purpose statement and learning to live on-purpose. Tip: When watching, click the “Listen” button. Next, place your cursor on the video controls and drag to minute 10 to the actual start of the webcast.

How Do I Focus My Small Business?

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As you stare at the walls of your office, your mind swirls with a hundred different items on your mental To Do List. You haven’t got a clue what to do next because everything seems important. By default you open up your email so at least you’re keeping up with something. A couple of hours pass at the keyboard and your list is only longer and you’re further behind than when you began. A sinking feeling leaves you even more overwhelmed and disappointed with yourself. Ugh! How do I go about organizing the business? How do I get more focused and productive? I’ll deal with it … tomorrow.

Admit it, you know this scenario all too well. And it bugs you because it is sabotaging your business, your dreams, and your finances. With so much on the line, you wonder, How can I be so stuck? 

Over the decades of working with business owners, this shallow pattern of performance is most often associated with an ill-defined or out of focus business. While brilliant ideas abound in your brain, there’s no blueprint to build the business. Would you hire a home builder to construct your house who didn’t have blueprints? Yet, you’ll build your business without the most basic of plans.

There’s a reason most SOHO (small office, home office) business owners don’t write their plans. It is called flexibility and responsiveness to opportunity. Unfortunately, keeping your options open typically results in a cycle of learning, but not one of earning. The secret to building your business is to create an economically efficient engine of profit. Once the engine is up and running, you can afford to invest in your other ideas. Depth, not breadth, is essential. This takes discipline and commitment … to a well designed, thoughtful, written plan.

Here are three On-Purpose® tools to help you gain focus and sustain it:

  1. Use The Discovery Guide to clarify which of your many options is the best. This “Want List and Tournament” tool is a free download and can be used for many situations, such as clarifying which opportunity makes the most sense for you and why.
  2. The Service Model is a simple tool to map out why and how to design and build your business on one page starting with purpose. 
  3. My On-Purpose Folder is a self or small group guided process to develop your personal leadership capacity. When you’re in mental disarray, your business will reflect it too.

You may think you have a plan, but you may not. Candidly ask yourself, Just how isFocus my plan working? If you’re not obtaining adequate results, speed to market, or profits, then please consider a small business advisory package. Let us help you bring order, focus, clarity, and direction to your business enterprise by guiding and documenting your business plan and model. Organizing the business is a couple of clicks and a few hours away.

Ambition. At What Price?

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Click on text for more information about the On-Purpose Small Business Package

The desire to make a positive difference is the sweet, soulful heart of ambition. In contrast is blind ambition that tramples all in its path to accomplish an end, perhaps even a noble end at that, which is fraught with unhealthy costs. Much of this rests on your view of people.  

Which will mark your life, career, and legacy?

Herein lies the rub for many a business person. To what lengths are you willing to go to realize your ambitions?

Results, especially in the form of company sales and profits, are outward and tangible measures of success. Measurable signs, however, tell just a portion of the story. If you want to know the full story, ask the people along the way who helped to produce the results.

Here’s a painful example. For 12 months spanning 2008 to 2009, I worked nearly full time with a CEO client to author a book that codified his corporate culture, leadership development moves, and business strategy for internal use. Intending for the company to go public via IPO, the book also targeted Wall Street analysts and investors so they could readily grasp what truly made this company great.

The IPO market at that time dried up with the challenges in the economy. Instead, the company was purchased by a national competitor for $130 million. By the CEO’s own admission, the book helped them get more than $15 million in greater value for shareholders over the IPO price, plus they kept their name, and the CEO was offered the position of President over the merged companies.

“Wow!” you may be thinking, “That CEO had to be a happy man.” You would think so. Eight months after delivery of the manuscript, a client satisfaction clause I wrote into the contract was used to deny issuing me an “earned” six-figure stock bonus despite personal assurances from the CEO to the contrary. My concern for my client’s satisfaction and best interests was used against me. Ouch! That hurts on so many levels.

Just because one can take advantage of another person, does that mean one should? Best-selling books on the art of war and being a prince would say go for it. But I say there’s nothing noble in selfishness and greed. True nobility is knowing one has the upper hand and using it to raise up the other person instead of jamming them down further.

The deeper value is seeing people as being above things. Translation: relationships are greater than transactions. Results with responsibilities and citizenship can coexist and produce true greatness.

For a couple of decades I’ve worked with my CEO clients to get them to stop saying things like, “Our people are our greatest asset.” Assets are bought and sold as in slavery. Relating people to assets dehumanizes them and places them on par with the photocopier. By the way, the investment in the photocopier maintenance agreement often far exceeds the equivalent “maintenance agreement” for the people in training, development, and benefits. How sad is that!

Along this same line, the term Human Resources certainly isn’t endearing and doesn’t advance the cause of people as human beings. Resources is just another name for commodities or assets that are traded, discarded, and otherwise moved about indiscriminately. The Human Resources Department is a blind co-conspirator in the loss of human identity and dignity. Instead, rename the department to something like, “People Development” or “Talent Management” but not “human resources.” It is degrading.

I hold no delusions of grandeur that either the perfect person or company graces the face of the planet. Self-serving serpents slither the planet preying on others. We are all capable of being this way, yet deep within our spirit we yearn to a higher self, call, and standard. We’re better to aspire and fail than to have no aspiration at all.

Gazing with admiration upon the shells of “successful” men and women may provide inspiration, but it tends to deliver little instruction. You know better. Get the true back story from the secretaries, bookkeepers, janitors, clerks, delivery persons, and cafeteria workers in corporate headquarters. Look at their personal life. Are their personal lives as captivating as their business headlines? You’ll soon discern whether the person capturing the headlines and your attention is gold-plated or 24 karat solid gold.

Do this: Whether you’re leading your life, a team, or a business, you need to decide: Ambition, at what price? Knowing your purpose and defining your values is a great start to building a life and a career where you can put your head to your pillow at night and sleep soundly.

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Here are some famous quotes about money for your consideration and amusement.

“Money makes the world go around.” $100 bill stack

From the song Money (Watch the performance!) in the Broadway play Cabaret sung by Liza Minnelli and Joel Grey.

“For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil.”

 1 Timothy 6

“A wise man should have money in his head, but not in his heart.”

Jonathan Swift

“Get all you can [money], without hurting your soul, your body, or your neighbor. Save all you can, cutting off every needless expense. Give all you can.”

John Wesley

“With money in your pocket, you are wise and you are handsome and you sing well, too.”

Yiddish Proverb

Leaders: How Is Your View of People?

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In Chief Leadership Officer, you’ll be introduced to “The Complete Competence Model” which is the next generation of “The 3 Views of People” model shared in this On-Purpose Business Minute.

Click on the image to pre-order Chief Leadership Officer until June 30, 2016 and get bonus rewards.
Click on the image to pre-order Chief Leadership Officer until June 30, 2016 and get bonus rewards.

How Is Your View of People?

Your response reveals your preferred place for leading. It tends to reveal how you view others as being competent. Until we learn otherwise, many who lead teams will project their preferred perspective onto others. It is a subtle form of, Why can’t they be more like me? Setting yourself as the standard sets everyone else up to fail which undermines the business performance.

Each person is unique and can bring a measure of unique contribution to even the most routine of work.

For example, On-Purpose Partners ships books and products from the Winter Park, FL Post Office branch. At the counter is a postal clerk named James. He resembles the comedian Joe Piscopo. James is literally a stand-up clerk offering ongoing entertaining commentary and laughter all day long. He brings out the best in his peer counter clerks as the banter between them all keeps things moving along. By the way, when the other clerks have a problem it is James they turn to. He knows his post office stuff. Many a postmaster might try to make James conform to a more “professional” decorum. Instead, he makes the wait tolerable and the service more than acceptable.

There are 3 Views of People:

  1. Expert — aspires to technical proficiency and sees the world through tasks to be done
  2. Manager — organizes teams of people and sees the world through projects
  3. Leader — sets culture and sees the world through results

Purpose informs all three points of view. This is one of the many reasons why The On-Purpose Principle is the essential basis for unifying people.

Few of us fully reside in a single view. Rather we’re a blend of all. Knowing your dominant preference, however, provides insights to job satisfaction, performance, and even future advancement. 

This speaks to the nature of fit. As a business advisor for over 3 decades, I’ve come across all kinds of challenges in organizations. One of the best disguised is this problem of poor fit between a person’s view of people and their role and responsibilities on the job. It is an often overlooked dimension that can create disasters or delights.

Years ago when I worked at a company, I was part of the hiring process for a property manager. When I asked this woman what she thought was her weakness she bluntly stated, “I don’t like people.” I shared my concerns with the hiring manager who hired her anyway. She was a good property manager (technical), but wreaked havoc in the office relationships and with tenants (manager). She so fouled the workplace that no one wanted to work with or for her (leadership). Even vendors complained.

The Complete Competency Model isn’t just a makeover of the Peter Principle which states that people eventually rise to their highest level of incompetency. People view may be one of the underlying causes of poor job performance and fit.

When there’s good alignment or fit between the person and the work, people view melts away and can often be taken for granted. Like good health, when we have it we’re prone to forget about it. But once we’re sick or injured we so appreciate what we used to have.

After watching this On-Purpose Business Minute, assess your people view with your job fit. What you discover about yourself could be very enlightening and rewarding to your long-term health, job satisfaction, and earning capacity. Coming to terms with this, however, may be another matter all together.

Having worked with business leaders and CEOs over my career, I’ve seen firsthand the price that is paid by a person and an organization when there is a clash of people view and the requirements of a job. Because my work is most often in the C-Suite, I’m especially alarmed when I find a “leader” who is really put off or bothered by people. They may be respected experts in their field, but they have little to no aptitude for leading and managing. That’s fine, but why have them lead? (When I raise this matter, it often gets tenderly complicated for me, the business advisor, when the misfit is the managing director, owner, or CEO of the enterprise. In some cases, however, this brings a sense of relief for the person because they better understand who they are and we can develop a plan of improvement or a workaround.)

On the other hand, the best leaders love and care for people, are effective at managing, and have mastered tasks sufficiently to have paid their dues and risen through the ranks to have the respect of their reports. Ultimately, it is their people skills that create the separation from good to great leadership.

True leaders are culture creators by design, not by default. Typically, they’re not the go-to expert in various fields, disciplines, or technologies. Their currency comes in denominations of their presence, decisions, manner, and tone. They get people working together. Leaders press the flesh and are visible. This isn’t out of ceremonial duty, but from a genuine love and respect for the people who follow their lead. Leaders are often reflective and thoughtful, and they know how to set healthy boundaries to avoid burnout and bitterness for others and themselves.

CLO cover 1
Chief Leadership Officer will rock your leadership perspective for good! Click the cover to learn more.

Do yourself a favor and take today’s message to heart. Where are you? Where would you like to be? If you need help creating your culture so it is on-purpose, then email us to consider some On-Purpose Executive or Personal Coaching. 

What Is Personal Leadership?

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Leadership is a broad term that, like beauty, is often described as “being in the eye of the beholder.” Ask ten people to define leadership and you’ll likely get ten facets of this brilliant diamond. Most can agree that leadership involves other people but that’s an incomplete understanding.

Whereas leadership involves working with others, personal leadership is about working with yourself. You can’t delegate this responsibility nor should you miss this opportunity to better your body, mind, and spirit. Here is the only place in the world where you possess a significant measure of control through choice. The power of choosing can be exercised and strengthened or avoided and diminished.  

Ask yourself the following personal leadership questions:

  • What am I feeding my mind, my body, my heart, and my spirit to be a better person?
  • Am I reading books, articles, blog posts, and other content that inspire me?
  • Who in my life uplifts and calls upon me to rise above my problems?
  • Am I investing my time in healthy exercise, eating, and behaviors?
  • Do I have a plan to learn something new in the next 30 days … or the next year?
  • What is one thing I can start doing today to make my life better?

Self-care is not selfish; it is essential. The more you develop as a person, the more others are willing to follow your lead. The better you know yourself, the stronger your leadership potential will increase. In other words, as you win in your inner life, then your outer life is likely to thrive.

CLO Personal Leadership
Pre-Order Chief Leadership Officer by June 30, 2016 by clicking the image above.

In this On-Purpose Minute, personal leadership is defined as “The proactive process of meaningfully aligning and integrating your life around what matters most.” As this On-Purpose Minute briefly explains, there’s more here than meets the eye. You hold the key to the ignition to start the process. Be thoughtful and intentional about exploring possibilities to think about how best to align and integrate your decisions to produce alignment and integration about what truly counts.

Here’s where a personal 2-word purpose statement pays dividends. When you know your purpose, you have a personal, universally applicable point of reference for alignment and integration. Life becomes simpler because you’re aware of who you are, and you have a growing appreciation for what’s right for you. 

The sooner you decide to be the leader of your life, the better off we all are. That, by the way, is true prosperity—everyone profits.

Personal Leadership involves the person you see in the mirror. Most of us will readily admit we have different “voices” within us competing for our “best” interest. No one escapes temptation. The following expressions offer insightful evidence of our inner demons of discontent and the desire for a more integrated life:

  • “I have my own demons to battle,” a la Flip Wilson‘s famous line, “The Devil made me do it.”
  • “I must not be in my right mind.”
  • “I’m torn. My head says one thing, my heart another.”
  • “I need some time to get my head together.”
  • “I can’t seem to get my act together.”
  • “Why am I so easily distracted?”

Get started leading your life right now! Not tomorrow. Not next week. Right now!

Not sure where to start? Write down what you want. The Discovery Guide can help you sort it out simply, quickly, and meaningfully. Download the free preview with instructions and the forms you need to take the next step toward being an on-purpose person in creation, being the Chief Leadership Officer of your life!CLO hard book cover open

Pre-Order Chief Leadership Officer today!

Download the Opening Chapters here.

 

Making Money or Making A Difference?

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“Making money or making a difference” captures the crux of the dilemma where many a business person lives. It isn’t an “either or” question. It is a “both and” matter. But, when push comes to shove, which way do you lean?

On-Purpose Peace Online Small Group Forming! Click on Image to Learn More.
Join me for an On-Purpose Peace Online Small Group! Click on Image to Learn More.

Early in my career I was largely driven to make money. I actually made lots of money at different times, but I lost lots of dollars, too—thanks in large part to an ugly business partnership divorce. My dealings with other money hungry people created a series of get-rich quick efforts that rarely panned out. Finding myself in a couple of ethically compromising situations, my spirit was disturbed and I was not at peace with myself.

I decided that my long-term best strategy for peaceful sleep and health was a wide margin from all borderline business dealings. That was in 1987. 

Since the late 1980s, I’ve faithfully nourished the message of purpose and pioneered being On-Purpose® only to see many others leverage (often poorly) the labor and reap the fruit. I’ve held, however, to the scripture that teaches, “The harvest is plentiful. The workers are few,” so I’ve welcomed my co-laborers.

With the release of On-Purpose Peace Fellowship Edition (Christian) and My On-Purpose Folder now I’m sharing my tools with the co-laborers. The live video-conference facilitation I’ll be hosting digs deeper. Come join me and be an on-purpose person in creation.

Back in the late 90s, however, I swung too far to the extreme “making a difference” side of the equation for too many years. I placed at risk my business, finances, and capacity to grow. It made it difficult for my team members. My generosity had personal and family implications as well.

The #1 Non-Fiction Book on Kindle Free!

Good News! My investment in others eventually had a “pay day.” The week of April 24–28, 2012, the fruit of my decision came to life in a humbling manner. At On-Purpose Partners we launched The On-Purpose Person on Kindle (http://www.oppkindle.com) with a free promotion, along with a free webcast called The Power of a 2-Word Purpose Statement.

Wow! My family, fans, friends, and clients came through with an outpouring of returned generosity and support. In the first 48 hours, over 13,000 souls downloaded The On-Purpose Person in the Kindle free market. 72 hours later over 32,539 souls had downloaded The On-Purpose Person during the campaign. This rocketed the message to the top of the Kindle free charts:

  • #5 in all categories
  • #1 in non-fiction Amazon 1 non-fiction
  • #1 Business
  • #1 Leadership
  • #1 Personal Growth
  • #1 Transformation
  • #1 Self Help
  • #1 Religion and Spirituality
  • #1 How to & Advice
  • And more!

At the time Julie Holzmann (Discovering Beauty) and I (Being On-Purpose) had worked together for over ten years. She sent me the closing clip of George Bailey (Jimmy Stewart) from It’s A Wonderful Life. In the scene all of George’s neighbors learn he may have to close the bank and they all pool their money to help. Now I knew what George felt like.

That day on April 24, 2012 as the Kindle e-book download count mounted past 1,000, then 2,000, then 5,000, and Wednesday climbed to 10,000 and 11,000 our George Bailey moment, as Julie so aptly called it, came to life. A few tears have been shed in appreciation and awe since. I could never have imagined that 32,539 souls would ultimately download the e-book.

Our small team here deserves so much credit. Julie works with me on communications. Cheryl helps with the office and keeping track of my easily distracted nature. Mary Tomlinson, my business partner, has taken this message into companies for more than 12 years. Mary Dominguez recognized how to leverage the opportunity with Kindle and brought needed energy and social media effort to the equation. We’ve partnered with technologies from Kudu Publishing, Constant Contact, Xiosoft Instant Teleseminar, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Amazon.com, Apple Inc., 37 Signals, Copyblogger, and more to pull off this launch. My intercessor, Mary R., brought the ultimate in “high” tech—prayer.

The likes of Seth Godin, Rick Radditz, David Bush, Greg Voisen, and Sandy Shugart and more shared the promotion with their email lists. What a team effort.

The generosity of others is the gift that pushed the launch into the 5-figures and top ranking. Too many people to mention here. You know who you are and how your contribution counted.

I pray that you too will have your “It’s A Wonderful Life Moment” and you’ll see the richness of your relationships and how you’re making a difference.

Thanks all for your trust! Be Yourself. Prosper. Make A Difference!

Be On-Purpose!
Kevin

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Which Team Experience Would Best Serve Your Business and Life?

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This On-Purpose Business Minute originally aired in September of 2009 when I was trying to help my daughter, Anne, decide about college sports opportunities. This week I was speaking with a long-time friend about an almost identical dilemma his daughters face so I thought it was appropriate to reach out for crowd wisdom, especially those of you who might have had college sports experiences.

This On-Purpose Business Minute invites your wisdom in the comment section. Help my friend’s daughters and other high school and college athletes better ponder their decisions about college sports programs. Share your perspectives and insights by answering this question:

Which Team Experience Would Best Serve Your Business and Life?

  • To be the 26th player on a national championship caliber team? Or
  • To be a four-year starter at a smaller college?

Learn more about the UNC Women’s Soccer Program by watching the video trailer to Winning Isn’t Everything. This is a great example of an On-Purpose Team!

By the way, Anne decided to focus on her academics while at UNC Chapel Hill and not play soccer. She graduated in three years and has a great job with Automattic, the creators of WordPress, the platform for this website as a matter of fact.

As fate would have it, she arrived on the UNC campus as a freshman and on activities day discovered there was a women’s rugby club team. Fascinated, she joined the club, excelled and took to it. In fact, because of her promise shown in the fall of her freshman year, she earned an invitation to attend the College All-American & National Team training camp. She played rugby for a couple of years until she tore an ACL in her knee at a match at the University of South Carolina. Judith and I were at that match and I saw her go down on the field after making a tackle. I thought her shoulder was hurt, not her leg.

While recovering from the surgery she better realized the physical risks of rugby along with the demands of being a college athlete. She elected to stop playing her last year to focus on her studies. Today, she plays pick up soccer, her sport where she was an All-State Player in Florida; and she remains an avid fan of rugby.

How to Make Money?

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Regardless of whether you have a job or own a business, today’s On-Purpose Business Minute invites you to explore three aspects of what it takes to make money and make even more money. 

Make Money TreeDo you have the mindset, the multiplier and the mechanism in place to make money?

For most people, how much money they want to make isn’t the challenge … it is making that amount of money that presents the real issue. So let’s revisit this classic On-Purpose Business Minute and explore some simple elements to making money.

Study the people who made or make big money — Sam Walton, Warren Buffet, Donald Trump, Bill Gates, Stephen Jobs, or whomever comes to mind — and you’ll find the three essential M’s are present and to the creation of their wealth in a socially responsible manner and in a way that is meaningful to each person.

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Do you have a favorite quote about money and wealth? Share it in the comments section. Here are some that I found valuable.

Abundance consists not alone in material possessions, but in an uncovetous spirit.

                Charles M. Sheldon

 

Those who condemn wealth are those who have none and see no chance of getting any.

                William Penn Patrick

 

That some should be rich, shows that others may become rich; and is hence just encouragement to industry and enterprise.

                Abraham Lincoln

 

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